Hacker News Reader

Comment by nkuttler | Hacker News Reader

You see the world in black and white. You are right and everybody who disagrees is wrong, a liar, childish or confused (all direct quotes from you).

I was simply going to ignore your aggressive behavior, but now that others chimed in...

> MIT/BSD/ISC license also give you permission to do things that you couldn't do otherwise, but does so under fewer restrictions.

Somebody takes a BSD program, extends it, and distributes binaries. This restricts my ability to inspect, improve, or extend the code. Restrictions don't have to be written into a license. You ignore those implicit restrictions and their consequences, while complaining about explicit restrictions.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure you're not going to agree and just add another aggressive or insulting reply.

View on HN

No, it doesn't. Your ability inspect, improve, and extend the BSD licensed code is not affected by the release of the closed derivative, and you had no ability to do that to the closed derivative before it was created and released, so there is no meaningful sense in which that release restricts an ability you had without it. There is a huge difference between failing to give you a new ability which you don't have prior to the release and restricting an ability.

Thanks, I understand your reasoning, but I think we'll just have to disagree.

>You see the world in black and white

I see simple objective questions in black and white because they are. Is 1+1 2? Yes. There is no grey area. The answer is yes. If you say it is 3, then you are in fact wrong.

>Somebody takes a BSD program, extends it, and distributes binaries. This restricts my ability to inspect, improve, or extend the code.

No it does not. See, this is precisely what I mean. You are simply making an objectively false statement. Here is some BSD licensed code: http://openssh.org/ I challenge you: restrict my ability to inspect, improve or extend it. Hundreds of closed source pieces of software use that code. Yet it is still there, still BSD licensed, my ability to inspect, improve and extend has not been magically removed.

>Anyway, I'm pretty sure you're not going to agree and just add another aggressive or insulting reply.

You might want to consider some introspection. You are screaming 1+1=3 at me and calling me "aggressive and insulting" for correcting you.

Exactly what I expected.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com